


sing with me just for today

by everybodyknowseverybodydies



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, F/M, it got sad and I'm sorry, rdficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:25:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3880426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybodyknowseverybodydies/pseuds/everybodyknowseverybodydies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Come to talk to me of science and dreams again, Dr. Song?”<br/>She sees his jaw shift, his eyes flick over the words of the book in his hands too quickly for him to be properly reading. She doesn’t sit down. “That depends, Reverend. Are you bracing yourself to call me a thousand names of women your Bible demonizes?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a hymn paperthin, discourse your saving song

**Author's Note:**

> 4\. Dystopian AU: in a world falling apart under over-population, religion and science remain the only forces society trusts. The Doctor is a preacher, River a biologist, fighting to preserve humanity.
> 
> I tweaked it a bit; River ended up being more of a generic scientist...
> 
> Title from Dream On by Aerosmith (and hey, the blessthefall cover is really great too) and chapter title from Anberlin's Feel Good Drag and Paperthin Hymn.

“Come to talk to me of science and dreams again, Dr. Song?”  
She sees his jaw shift, his eyes flick over the words of the book in his hands too quickly for him to be properly reading. She doesn’t sit down. “That depends, Reverend. Are you bracing yourself to call me a thousand names of women your Bible demonizes?”  
“We don’t demonize women.”  
“Jezebel. Eve. Martha. Bathsheba. Job’s wife. Rahab the prostitute. Saphira. Even Mary Magdalene had her sins, I hear.”  
“As do the men,” he counters. “Peter. Thomas. Ananias. Adam. Judas Iscariot. Saul. Paul. Even the great King David – Bathsheba wasn’t to blame in that story, doctor. Nearly all the kings of Israel and Judah; it would be quicker to name those who were good.” He sets his worn red Bible down and removes his glasses to clean the lenses. “Which leads me to ask: what are you doing here, if you aren’t here to tell me I’m wrong and you don’t believe you are wrong?”  
River drops a blue book, equally battered, onto his desk. “I’ve come to trade literature as you asked.”  
His eyebrows raise, and he looks at her with an attentiveness she has come to recognize he reserves for his devotions. “I was under the impression you don’t share the secrets of your trade with anyone.”  
“You keep telling me your faith doesn’t disagree with my science.” She leans over his desk. “I’m here to prove you wrong.”  
The Reverend Smith gives her a slightly sad smile. “Dr. Song. The thing about faith is that it is by nature believing in things unseen, but it is not blind.”  
“Isn’t it?” she challenges.  
He pushes his glasses up his nose. The light glints off the streaks of grey in his dark hair. She doesn’t like the feeling in her gut that tells her to trust him, because he’s wrong. Obviously.  
He’s an old man stuck on theology and distrustful of facts, she starts to tell herself.  
“Well then.” He takes her blue book and pushes his red one over to her. “Let’s begin.”

They meet again the next week like a tiny book club. There’s a bruise under her right shoulder blade and someone else’s blood under her fingernails. If he asks, she will attribute the disarray to the struggle on the job market; there are too many unemployed people and too few open positions, and perhaps he will blame science for extending the life expectancy of the average human being and thus raising the average age of retirement as so many do –  
But he does not ask about her dirty hands or the tilt of her shoulders, and she likes him a little better for it.  
“Did you enjoy what you read?” he does ask, and he looks more interested in her answer than in his coffee, which is mildly surprising.  
She shrugs noncommittally. “I wasn’t bored, if that’s what you mean. Well. Mostly. There were quite a lot of genealogies I might have skimmed.”  
He chuckles and pushes her blue book back to her. “I found your theories and laws quite fascinating as well. Especially the section on quantum mechanics.”  
“Really?” Her eyes light up. “So you agree, then. I did explain why the limitations of time make it impossible for anything to have ‘always existed’ as you claim your God does.”  
“I must disagree with you there.”  
“I expected as much.” She rolls her eyes. “Alright, go on.”  
He gives her a smile and folds his hands on his desk. “Imagine, for a moment, that space and time don’t necessarily have to apply to all entities. Suppose there were something like a metaphysical Mobius strip that existed outside of time.”  
“Which is impossible. Where would it have come from?”  
“When you start drawing a circle, how do you know where to begin?” he counters. “You don’t. It doesn’t have a starting point. It doesn’t have any points; it’s round.”  
She blinks. “What does that have to do with –”  
He takes his glasses off to clean them, growing more animated. “Something that exists outside of time – why, that would be the only thing capable of travelling through it, of changing it, because it would not be affected by the journey. We would be; we age and die and wrap our lives around clocks! But something that doesn’t have to fear the tick-tock tick-tock –”  
She tastes bile at the sound and doesn’t know why.  
“– what would time matter to such a being? Place God outside the timeline, and he is not so impossible after all. He is not the first thing on the timeline; he comes before the timeline. He creates the timeline! What creator is bound by his creation? Thus he is not limited to time and does not have to be caused, as things affected by time do.”  
Tick-tock goes the clock. River rests her chin in her palm and raises her eyebrows. “You seem to have done a lot of thinking about time.”  
He quirks a little smile. “I’m much closer to the end than you are, Dr. Song. When the clock is ticking in your ear, I’m sure you’ll think about it quite a lot as well.”  
She doesn’t need to match the number of his years to know what time running out sounds like. But she smiles and nods and lets him think he’s right this time.

Reverend Smith scratches his jaw and gestures for her to stand across from him, pushing a chair out of the way in his little office. “You’re a kinetic learner, I believe?”  
“What?” She stands back, confused, arms crossed. “What are you doing?”  
“You learn by doing?”  
She smirks and lifts her chin. “What are you going to try to teach me, reverend?”  
“I just thought perhaps it would be clearer to you the enormity of what you read if you experience it for yourself, a sort of… roleplaying, if you will?”  
“Roleplaying? Should we go somewhere the portrait of Christ won’t be watching?”  
He sputters, caught off-guard. “I don’t – Dr. Song – no,” he says firmly, placing his hands on her shoulders, and guides her two steps to the left. She doesn’t see the point.  
It’s probably best to let him wear himself out though.  
“Is that gun loaded?” he asks. She looks down at the holster on her hip and purses her lips.  
“Would I carry it if it weren’t?”  
“Would you?”  
“No.”  
He nods, and she takes it out. “Now –” Taking a step back from her, he drops his hands to his sides. “Point it at me.”  
She squints at him. “You understood the part about it being loaded, didn’t you?”  
“Yes. Point it at me.” He waits patiently for her to do so. “Now imagine, if you will, that you’re going to kill me.”  
“Why?”  
“Why is the dark a better hiding place than the light?” he returns without explanation.  
River rocks on her heels. “Because human eyes aren’t made to see in the dark; it has to do with –”  
“Yes, yes, rhetorical question.” He sighs and waves a hand. “Do it.”  
“What?” She drops the gun to her side, staring at him. “I’m not going to shoot you!”  
“You hate me, don’t you? You’re a woman of science; you despise everything I stand for. That’s why you’ve come here every Saturday afternoon the past six months. To prove me wrong.” He reaches for her hand, presses the barrel to his chest. She licks her lips and hates the sincerity in his eyes. “Imagine that hate amplified enough that you could pull the trigger without prompting. That is why the people killed Christ. Not to save themselves, but because they needed someone to die to feed their hatred.”  
“I thought you said he was supposed to die to save everyone or whatever?”  
“That’s why he died. It isn’t why they killed him.” He takes her other hand and wraps it around the gun, the pads of his fingers callused. The reverend has not yet broken eye contact.  
She’s starting to twitch. “I’m not going to shoot you.”  
“I know.” He takes a breath, exhaling slowly. “But if you did. I would tell you the same thing Christ told his killers.”  
“You would tell me you’re God?”  
“I would tell you that you are forgiven.” He says it quietly, he says it like the words are made of glass, he says it like he wants her to listen. He says it like _I love you._  
She drags the tip of her tongue across her lower lip again and takes the tiniest of steps backwards. “Am I?”  
“Always. Completely.”  
“Even if I _have_ killed someone?”  
“Even then.”  
“Just like that.” He nods and lets go of her hands. She clears her throat and pushes him away. “It isn’t a very good justice system.”  
With a laugh, he shakes his head. “Maybe not. But it’s a wonderful grace system.”  
She still doesn’t like it. But he does have a nice laugh.

When she comes to his office in the church again, she’s followed by a small child. “I can’t help you,” she says as she turns to shoo the little girl away.  
The child has a dirty face and eyes too big for her skull and tiny fingers dug into her sides. “Aren’t you a scientist?”  
“Not a very good one.” She hesitates, then crouches a moment. But certainly not because his altruism is rubbing off on her. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?”  
“Yes, it’s perfectly alright. I think I’m dying,” says the little girl matter-of-factly. “Everyone else is too.”  
Tick-tock goes the clock. _When the clock is ticking in your ear…_ “I hope not. I’m sorry.”  
“Why are you at church?”  
River stops and looks up. Why is she here? To see the reverend? She’s seen so much of him lately she’s begun to memorize the order of the books on his shelves. “I’m just walking by.”  
She leaves the child and the church. There are too many things to be done, and none of them involve a smiling man with greying hair and a stupid chin.  
She doesn’t return to his office.


	2. maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What brings you by, reverend?”  
> “Well.” He pushes his round glasses up his nose and stares at her seriously. “I think the world is ending.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title chapter from Dream On (still by Aerosmith and I'm still recommending the blessthefall cover as well).

It’s raining and cold the night he shows up at her door for the first time. “I thought,” he says, “it was my turn to walk a little ways.”  
She shrugs and shoves a stack of papers into a drawer in her desk, because he might have a stroke if he sees the word ‘evolution,’ she thinks wryly. “Was it now? What brings you by, reverend?”  
“Well.” He pushes his round glasses up his nose and stares at her seriously. “I think the world is ending.”  
With a snort River spins her chair around a couple times, partly because she can and partly because if she looks at him too long she’ll start laughing for real. He’s so concerned, as if he hasn’t known that all along. “How long has it taken you to notice? It started ending the moment it was created, just like everything starts dying the moment it’s born.”  
“Ever the optimist, Dr. Song.”  
“I like to think so.” She raises her eyebrows and gives him a smirk. “What is life but a journey to death? How’s that for philosophical, reverend?”  
“Poetic, if a bit of a drag.”  
“Mm, I’m working on it.” She leans across her desk – it’s far more cluttered than his, to match the rest of her tiny workspace. A stack of papers slides off the side when she bumps it with her elbow. It probably doesn’t matter, so she leaves it. “So. The world is ending.”  
He nods. “I hadn’t really wanted to… to…”  
“Agree with me?”  
“…admit to something as, er, worrisome as that,” he says instead, face reddening at her cheeky grin.  
She wraps a curl idly around the tip of her finger. “Mmhmm. Which brings you to me because why now?”  
The reverend is quiet for a moment, fiddling with the edges of his Bible’s pages. “Well,” he says finally, “you seem a sensible person to watch the end of the world with.”  
River smiles and reaches across the desk to take his red book from him. “Do I? I must have given the wrong impression then if I come across as sensible to a theologian.”  
“Sensible may not be exactly the right word for it, actually, Dr. Song.”  
“Call me River and I’ll let it slide.” She gets up, going to the window and shutting the blinds. “The apocalypse isn’t very exciting, is it? No zombies, no meteors hurtling to earth, no fiery explosions or plagues or aliens or monsters. Just people.”  
He gives her a tired smile. “People can be worse than monsters sometimes.”  
Tick tock tick tock. The sky is tinted orange with the sunset. She hopes he doesn’t see. “Sometimes.”  
“River.”  
Her name sounds heavy in his mouth, and she wonders if a man of God is allowed to sound like that.  
“It’s getting late. Please, let me… let me walk you home.”  
“Do you need protection?” she teases. “Not allowed to carry a gun?”  
Reverend Smith stands and offers his hand without answering. His round glasses slip a little further down his nose. “Why don’t you have a clock in here?” he asks quietly.  
Her smile turns plastic. “Why should I? You said it yourself; the world is ending. It’s been ending for a long time now. Why does it matter if I know what time it is?”  
“You’re afraid of… time?”  
“Please. I’m not afraid of anything, reverend.” She brushes past him and leaves him standing in the tiny room.

He comes back a few days later and finds her at her desk with her eyes closed and her gun gripped tight in a white-knuckled hand. “River?”  
For a moment she pretends she’s asleep. Maybe he’ll leave and she won’t have to look at his worry-lined face. But he doesn’t go away so she rubs at her eyes and looks up at him. “Why do you believe? Don’t answer that with a question.”  
The reverend looks at her for a long moment, then bows his head. “I look at the stars in the sky and I don’t see how anything random could have made such beauty. I look at the human form and I see a work of art. I look at physics and I see design. I believe, Dr. Song, because I don’t see any other choice.”  
She stares at him with half-narrowed eyes, and for a moment she almost thinks he might be right.  
“Why don’t you?” he asks softly when she says nothing.  
River stands and looks away. “I haven’t had the best experience with the church.” Small hands twist at the edge of her jacket, fiddling idly. “You’re the first I’ve met who actually seems to care about people rather than being right.”  
“I do. What use is being right if no one cares to hear you? I’d rather be wrong and remembered for being kind than be right and remembered for cruelty.”  
She laughs. The sound cracks in the chilled air and shatters halfway out of her throat. “You? You couldn’t be cruel if you tried.”  
He is tired and he is sad. “Anyone can, I’ve found.”  
For a moment neither of them says anything. She remembers a scuffle after sunset, a bruise on her shoulder and blood under her nails. She doesn’t know what he thinks of. “Why do you think of science and dreams together?” she asks him abruptly.  
“Because.” He sits slowly on the edge of her desk, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Both are beautiful. And science came from the dreams of people who wanted to understand, bizarrely enough. How often do you understand dreams?”  
“What do you dream about?”  
“Home,” he answers without hesitation. He smiles, and when she says nothing he looks up at the ceiling. “Neither of us should be poets, I’m afraid. I dream of dying, River.”  
“Why would that be the same as dreaming of home?”  
“Because by the time I die, it will be. Most of the people I care about are waiting on me there; they are what makes it home.”  
She takes his hand quietly. “I’m not.”  
“I know.”  
“Don’t die yet. I still have to convince you that you’re wrong.”  
He chuckles. “I’ll do my best to hold off as long as possible.”

She’s just left her building when she sees. A child – a little girl with too-big brown eyes and dark messy hair and a dirt-streaked face, struggling with a man and crying. “Hey – stop,” River drops her bag and runs over. “Stop, stop! What are you doing? Leave her alone!”  
The man bares his teeth. His hot breath hits her face; she chokes on the stench of dehydration and stale food caught between his molars. “Stay out of this and I won’t have to hurt you, doll,” he hisses.  
She doesn’t know where the child has gone. With luck he won’t notice. “I’m not your doll, jackass.”  
He grabs her wrist and twists, trying to loosen her grip on the gun. Her knee slams into his groin, and he doubles over, and she jerks her elbow into the back of his head – there’s a scuffle – and pulled hair and clawed eyes and the tip of his finger bitten off – and a yell – and a shot –  
She stumbles backwards. There is shock in the ‘o’ of her mouth, and then nothing.  
_You are forgiven._  
The man runs. He worries she will come after him when she gets up.  
She does not.

There is nothing in the newspaper, not even after the Reverend Smith offers to write something small himself. There is nothing from the scientists in the glass dome three streets down from her tiny room of a workspace, nothing except a confused look and a “who?” Reverend Smith bows his head and doesn’t try to explain.  
There is nothing on the news, nothing at all. If there was, he imagines they would attribute the disarray to the struggle on the job market and say there are too many unemployed people and too few open positions, and perhaps they would blame science for extending the life expectancy of the average human being and thus raising the average age of retirement to create the need for more open jobs. But there is nothing, and he doesn’t know whether to be bitter or relieved.  
He stands behind her desk with a tightness in his throat and nothing in his chest. No one else came to claim her things, the boxes of notes and the half-dry pens and the dog-eared books and her little blue journal, and taking them from the room that still smells faintly of citrus and cinnamon feels like more of a sin than anything written on stone tablets.  
Reverend Smith locks her door behind him and sits in his car. He wishes he could cry, but he’s not sure he knows how anymore if he hasn’t by now. He tries to pray.  
_Lord. Oh, God, why? If I had been with her – if I had spent more time – if I had – if I –_  
He spends the week going through the four boxes that make up what’s left of River Song. He moves her things into the spare room at home and sits on the floor surrounded in her careful handwriting.  
Her driver’s license does not say “Dr. River Song,” and in fact as far as he can tell nothing does. There are crumpled letters from all over, and though the words are different the messages are the same. _Dear Ms. Song, It is with regret we write to inform you at this time there are no internships available… Many aspiring STEM field applicants… Not enough field experience… Thank you for your application… Try again next year._  
He swallows hard and moves on. When Sunday comes, the room almost looks lived in.  
The congregation, his thinning herd, survive his sermon oblivious to his breaking voice, and if he is gentler about the consequences science has had, no one notices.  
Her headstone is small and simple, no more than her name and the day she died. He sits beside it quietly and reads; he imagines her every argument against what he has to say.  
_Call me River and I’ll let it slide._  
He never asked her to call him John. He wishes he had.  
_The righteous perish_  
He wets his lips and traces her name. “I’m sorry, River.”  
_And no one understands_  
“The world is still ending.” He looks up at the sky. “Slowly. Do you want me to say you’re right? Because you’re right. It’s boring.”  
_The righteous are taken away_  
“You’re right, okay?” He cuts his thumb on the edge of the G. “Come back and gloat, you maddening woman,” he whispers.  
_To be spared from evil_  
He slowly lowers himself to the ground, lying on his back with his red Bible in one hand and her blue book in the other. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” he murmurs, “the Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you…”  
_They find rest_  
“The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.” He closes his eyes. He is so, so tired.  
_As they lie in death_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> verses quoted: Isaiah 57:1-2; Numbers 6:24-26


End file.
